Hi Everyone,

Hope you’re looking forward to this week’s podcast.

In it I am joined by the awesome RJ Macasaet COO of Ubiqum Code Academy. We discuss how OKRs & Agile link together and the interplay between them.

RJ has been in the world of agile development for the last 15 years, so is well versed on the intricacies of this. He delivers some fascinating insights into how OKRs can work alongside the Agile framework based on case studies from organisations all around the world.

Ubiqum are based across 6 cities with OKRs aligned into one global vision. This allows them to create unparalleled alignment throughout the organisation and ensure everyone is singing to the same hymn sheet. This doesn’t mean that their core agile principles have been lost though, they ensure that everything is aligned by allowing the Key Results to provide the context for the agile sprints.

RJ manages this by allowing his teams to create ‘Adaptive OKRs’ which have ranges of acceptable results for the KRs, rather than a set stretch goal. It’s an interesting concept, that I admit I would like to see more evidence of the effectiveness of before I adopted it for our OKR methodology. It is a clear demonstration of one of OKRs fundamental principles though, you MUST adapt the framework to suit your business. There is no one size fits all approach, but this is the approach that worked for Ubiqum, and that’s awesome that they found it.

Throughout RJ’s career he has published a number of articles and research papers on the agile framework and it’s place in the modern business, these can be found here. 

Hope you enjoy the podcast and please do let me know what you think!
Lawrence